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An ancient Chinese discipline, tai chi has been adopted as an effective and beneficial tool for both mind and body.

Consisting of a series of slow, fluid movements and deep breathing, tai chi is a form of exercise that places emphasis on stretching and strength training. It incorporates the idea of yin/yang by having the physical element of one’s body complement their mental self-awareness.

Tai chi is also popular because it’s a low-impact form of exercise. Thus it’s suited for individuals who have trouble with mobility, particular elder adults. In fact, Harvard Medical School has declared that it boosts the same benefits as regular exercise(1).

Types of tai chi

There are five different tai chi styles that can be adjusted to better suit one’s personal fitness level.

Yang style : This type is better suited for beginners. It focuses on relation and slow movements.

Wu style : Practiced very slowly, this form focuses on micro-movements.

Chen style : This is a more advanced and physically demanding form of tai chi. It uses both slow and fast movements that include kicking and crouching.

Sun style : Similar to chen style but less physically demanding.

Hao style : A less popular and practiced form of tai chi, hao style places emphasis on internal strength and development.

A lot of individuals have begun to use this martial arts because of its ability to boost overall health. Read on for the benefits that adopting tai chi can bring.

Alleviated fibromyalgia symptoms

Fibromyalgia is a disorder that causes chronic muscle pain and fatigue.

According to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal, tai chi can be used as tool in managing the symptoms of fibromyalgia, particularly fatigue and pain.

Better sleep quality

If you’re battling with insomnia, signing up for tai chi can help ensure restful sleep in both young adults and the elderly (2, 3).

Boosted heart health

Exercise can help to strengthen cardiovascular health and tai chi is no different.

Aside from lowering blood pressure, it also helps to ease inflammation and strengthen blood vessels (4).

Enhanced cognitive ability

Aside from its slow, steady movements, tai chi is regularly adopted by older adults because of its effect on their cognitive capabilities.

According to a systematic review published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, tai chi helped to improve memory and operative skills.

Improved mental health

As it places a strong emphasis on meditation and deep, focused breathing, tai chi has been credited as being a natural stress reliever (5).

The controlled breathing helps to promote a self-awareness and this can increase patience and, according to one study, alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Lowered risk of falling

Tai chi is also popular amongst the elderly because it lowers the risk of falling.

In improving balance and motor function, one study revealed that practicing for 12 to 26 weeks one to three times weekly reduced the frequency of falls by 43%. Another study also revealed how tai not only reduced the risk of falling in people with Parkinson’s disease but it also improved their balance.

With the above-mentioned benefits, one would likely include tai chi in their fitness resolutions. In fact, the ageless Halle Berry cited learning a new martial art as one of her 2019 fitness resolutions.

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In January, the full moon is also sometimes known as the wolf moon or great spirit moon

Here comes a total lunar eclipse and supermoon, all wrapped into one.

The moon, Earth and sun will line up this weekend for the only total lunar eclipse this year and next. At the same time, the moon will be ever so closer to Earth and appear slightly bigger and brighter than usual a supermoon.

“This one is particularly good,” said Rice University astrophysicist Patrick Hartigan. “It not only is a supermoon and it’s a total eclipse, but the total eclipse also lasts pretty long. It’s about an hour.”

The whole eclipse starts on January 20 night or early on Monday, depending on location , and will take about three hours.

It begins with the partial phase around 10-34 p.m. EST on January 20. That’s when Earth’s shadow will begin to nip at the moon. Totality when Earth’s shadow completely blankets the moon will last 62 minutes, beginning at 11-41 p.m. EST on Sunday.

If the skies are clear, the entire eclipse will be visible in North and South America, as well as Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and the French and Spanish coasts. The rest of Europe, as well as Africa, will have partial viewing before the moon sets. Some places will be livestreaming it, including the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

During totality, the moon will look red because of sunlight scattering off Earth’s atmosphere. That’s why an eclipsed moon is sometimes known as a blood moon. In January, the full moon is also sometimes known as the wolf moon or great spirit moon.

So informally speaking, the upcoming lunar eclipse will be a super blood wolf or great spirit moon.

In the U.S., the eclipse will begin relatively early on January 20 evening, making it easier for children to stay up and enjoy the show. Plus the next day is a federal holiday, with most schools closed. But the weather forecast for much of the U.S. doesn’t look good.

Parents “can keep their kids up maybe a little bit later,” said, Hartigan, who will catch the lunar extravaganza from Houston. “It’s just a wonderful thing for the whole family to see because it’s fairly rare to have all these things kind of come together at the same time.”

“The good thing about this is that you don’t need any special equipment,” he added.

Asia, Australia and New Zealand are out of luck. But they had prime viewing last year, when two total lunar eclipses occurred.

The next total lunar eclipse won’t be until May 2021.

As for full-moon supermoons, this will be the first of three this year. The upcoming supermoon will be about 222,000 miles (357,300 kilometres) away. The Feb. 19 supermoon will be a bit closer and the one on March 20 will be the farthest.

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The comet will even pass through the observing field of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

Stargazers are in for a treat as the “brightest comet” is set to make one of the 10 closest comet flybys of Earth in 70 years, and one may even be able to see it without a telescope on Sunday, NASA said. Although the comet known as 46P/Wirtanen will approach at a distant 11.4 million kilometres or 30 lunar distances from Earth, it’s still a fairly rare opportunity. Comet Wirtanen has already been visible in larger amateur telescopes, and while the brightness of comets is notoriously difficult to predict, there is the possibility that during its close approach comet Wirtanen could be visible with binoculars or to the naked eye, NASA said in a statement on Friday.

“This will be the closest comet Wirtanen has come to Earth for centuries and the closest it will come to Earth for centuries,” said Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “This could be one of the brightest comets in years, offering astronomers an important opportunity to study a comet up close with ground-based telescopes, both optical and radar,” he added.

First discovered by astronomer Carl Wirtanen in 1948, 46P/Wirtanen, with a width of 1.1 kilometres, orbits the Sun fairly quickly for a comet — once every 5.4 years — making it a short-period comet. (Long-period comets, on the other hand, have orbital periods greater than 200 years.) At the time of closest approach, the comet will appear to be located in the constellation Taurus close to the Pleiades.

In a bid to take advantage of the close approach, astronomers led by the University of Maryland are planning an observation campaign. The campaign would aid in the detailed scientific study of the properties of this “hyperactive” comet which emits more water than expected, given its relatively small nucleus. The comet will even pass through the observing field of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), NASA said.

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Ecosystems like oceans and forests may stop absorbing carbon from the atmosphere but start emitting it due to the human-induced climate change, according to a new study.

Those systems are known as natural carbon sinks that could suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Among them, the peatlands with a carbon dioxide-rich type of soil called peat are the most efficient natural carbon sink on the planet.

When undisturbed, they store more carbon dioxide than all other vegetation types on Earth combined. But when the peatlands are drained and deforested, they can release nearly six percent of global carbon dioxide emissions each year, according to the researchers, Xinhua news agency report

The lush greenery that comes with diversity in the tree species in the Amazon rainforest appears to be under threat from climate change. Image courtesy: WWF

“Global peatlands cover only about three per cent of the global land area but hold around 30 percent of the earth’s soil organic carbon,” said author Zhuang Qianlai, Professor at Purdue University.

For the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team looked at peatlands in the Peruvian Amazon to try to find out if a large amount of peat carbon can be released under a warmer climate.

According to an earth systems model spanning from 12,000 years ago to 2100 AD, the relatively small basin could lose up to 500 million tonnes of carbon by the end of this century.

That’s about five percent of current global annual fossil fuel carbon emissions or 10 percent of US emissions that are spit back out into the atmosphere, the researchers noted.

The study showed that higher temperatures led to more peat carbon loss, although increased precipitation slightly enhanced the build-up of peat carbon over long timescales. Together, the carbon loss from peatlands to the atmosphere would be increased.

“If the area we looked at could represent the whole Amazonia or tropical peatlands, the loss of peat carbon to the atmosphere under future climate scenarios should be of great concern to our society,” Zhuang said.